Friday, September 17, 2010

Group
Policies are normally applied to the user or their PC depending on where they
are located in Active Directory. There are occasions, especially for terminal
servers, when you wish users to have certain policies applied depending on
which computer they log on to. This is where the loopback policy comes into its
own.Two
modes options when applying loopback processing:

Replace Mode: The user policy is defined
entirely from the GPOs associated with the machine. Any GPOs associated with
the user are ignored.

Merge Mode: The user policy settings
applied are the combination of those included in both the machine and user
GPOs. Where conflicts exist, the machine GPOs "win".

A
common use of loopback is on Terminal Services machines. In this scenario, it
is common for the Group Policy administrator to set specific user policy
settings for the server to ensure that all users using the machine receive a
defined set of user policy settings.

In
order to define the Loopback Processing setting, the following steps should be
followed.

1. Open the Group Policy Object editor
(gpedit.msc). See Create/Edit GPOs for details.

3. Within the Administrative Templates node,
expand the System node, and then the Group Policy node.

4. Locate the setting "User Group
Policy loopback processing mode". Double click this setting, and define
the setting as needed.

* Merge Mode: When Merge mode is
selected, application of user-based group policy begins as normal:

·The distinguished name of the user is evaluated
for it's location in the Active Directory. For example, the user John Smith in
the Boston OU at BigCompany Corporation might have a distinguished name of
CN=John Smith,OU=Boston,DC=BigCompany,DC=Com.

·Group policy parses the Distinguished Name, and
attempts to locate policies that apply to users at each "stage" of
the name. The search is performed from left to right (e.g. the Boston OU is
searched first, then the domain root of BigCompany). Finally, the Active Directory
Site of the user is evaluated for user policies.

·Based on the effective permissions of the user,
Group Policy determines which of these policy objects (if any) should apply to
the user.

·Policies are then applied in a last in, first out
(LIFO) series. So, any policies that applied at the site level are applied
first, then the domain, and finally at the OU containing the user. If multiple
policies were defined at the OU or domain level, the policy with the highest
precedence is added to the list first (so it will be processed last, and
overwrite earlier policies).

To
this point, policy processing is exactly like normal. However, once 'normal'
processing has completed, a second iteration begins:

·As before, Goup Policy evaluates the Distinguished
Name - except this time, it is the Distinguished Name of the Computer, rather
than the User. For our example, let's say that the computer is in the
Headquarters OU under the BigCompany root. The Distinguished Name is
OU=Headquarters,DC=BigCompany,DC=Com.

·The same processing rules apply as before: Group
Policyevaluates policies at each
level of the Distinguished Name, adding policies to the stack of policies to
apply. The difference is that Group Policy is now searching for User policies
that are defined in the computer's organization structure.

·This second set of policies is applied (again,
Last In, First Out), with any policy setting conflicts being "won" by
the last policy to apply the setting. So, if more restrictive settings are
defined for users in a policy object linked to the Headquarters OU, those
settings will apply to the user when logging onto a machine with Merge mode
applied.

Typically,
Merge mode is defined on Terminal Servers in an environment. The reason for
this is that Administrators typically want to enforce aspecific set of desktop and security settings, to
help minimize potential variables that lead to unpredictable behavior on the
Terminal Server. By enabling Merge mode, and defining all potential problem
policy settings, the Administrator can enforce a consistent user experience.

·In Replace mode, the user's Distinguished Name is
not evaluated for Group Policy processing. Instead, we rely entirely on the
Distinguished Name of the machine the user is logging onto.

·Again using the previous example, the
Distinguished Name OU=Headquarters,DC=BigCompany,DC=Com would be evaluated for
User Policies, with any policies that the user has permissions to read and
apply being enforced.

·As before, the list of policies to apply is built
from closest to farthest away (OU=Headquarters first, then DC=BigCompany,
etc..). The list is then applied in reverse order, so that the OU settings have
highest precadence.

·The "normal policy set" for the user is
ignored completely. Part of policy application is to delete the settings
applied previously, so no (managed) settings will carry over to apply when
Replace is defined, unless that setting was also defined in the User Settings
applied during Replace mode.

Replace
mode is useful for environments where specific policies are required regardless
of the rights and settings of the user. Kiosk systems are a good example of
this; an Administrator would typically have an unrestricted desktop experience.
If that user logs onto a Kiosk machine, he or she would normally have a
"wide open" desktop. This might be dangerous, so it may be useful to
enable Replace mode to enforce a specific set of enforced settings.

Sunday, September 12, 2010

As Facebook
Chat, Google Talk, Lotus Same-time and Jabber etc have come under the same platform
of the real-time communication protocol
XMPP, seemingly other chat clients tend to focus on changing their plat
form to XMPP. Google talk and Jabber have already proven and got recognized for
its less vulnerability behavior comparing to Yahoo messenger and Windows
messengers, so the main strength of XMMP is its security.

The
Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP) is an open technology for
real-time communication, which powers a wide range of applications including
instant messaging, presence, multi-party chat, voice and video calls,
collaboration, lightweight middleware, content syndication, and generalized
routing of XML data. It is build based on Extensible Mark-up Language (XML). Unlike
most instant messaging protocols, XMPP uses an open systems approach of
development and application, by which anyone may implement an XMPP service and
interoperate with other organizations' implementations. The software
implementation and many client applications are distributed as free and open
source software.

Sponsored Links

The
core technology behind XMPP was invented by Jeremie Miller in 1998, refined in
the Jabber open-source community in 1999 and 2000, and formalized by the IETF
in 2002 and 2003, resulting in publication of the XMPP RFCs in 2004.

The
first IM service based on XMPP was Jabber.org, which has operated continuously
since 1999 and has offered free accounts to users of XMPP. From 1999 until
February 2006 the service used jabberd as its server software, at which time it
migrated to ejabberd. In January 2010, the service plans to migrate to
proprietary M-Link software produced by Isode Ltd.

In
August 2005, Google introduced Google Talk, a combination VoIP and IM system
which uses XMPP for its instant messaging function and as a base for its voice
and file transfer signalling protocol.

The
social-networking giant Facebook opened up its chat feature to third-party
applications via XMPP. The Facebook developers' site notes that Facebook Chat
does not actually run an XMPP server internally, but merely presents an XMPP
interface to clients; consequently, some server-side features like roster
editing cannot be done via XMPP.

In
addition to Google Talk, many other public IM services use XMPP, including Live
Journal's "LJ Talk" and Nokia's Ovi. Furthermore, several enterprise
IM software products that do not natively use XMPP nevertheless include
gateways to XMPP, including IBM Lotus Sametime and Microsoft Office
Communications Server.

Although
the core technology is stable, the XMPP community continues to define various
XMPP extensions through an open standards process run by the XMPP Standards
Foundation. There is also an active community of open-source and commercial
developers, who produce a wide variety of XMPP-based software.

Thursday, September 9, 2010

Currently Facebook does not provide account merging feature for its users. Facebook does not allow you to merge your duplicate account to your much active account.

But you can try below work around solution to bring two accounts together, this is very important to keep only one Facebook account because maintaining multiple accounts is a violation of Facebook's Terms of Use.

Copy your profile content (e.g. photos, notes, etc.) and add it manually to your more active account. Unfortunately, there will be some things you cannot transfer, such as Friends and Wall posts. Once you have moved all information onto a single account, please deactivate your old account from the Settings tab of the Account page. Afterward, you can add email addresses and networks to your new account from the Account page.

You can use 'Suggest Friend' option and bring your friends who are in your unwanted account to your active account.